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Another day, another set of early morning tweets from President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice declined an invitation to testify before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism. Rice was asked to appear in order to discuss Russia’s actions during the 2016 election, though it is likely that she would have also faced questions about the practice of “unmasking” Americans who get involved with foreign figures under investigation by the intelligence community.

Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice has turned down a request to testify before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism. CNN was first to report––and Fox News subsequently reported––that Rice’s lawyer sent a letter back to committee chair Lindsey Graham and Democratic ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse that said, in part, “Chairman Graham’s invitation was extended only after the hearing was noticed, less than two weeks before the hearing was scheduled to occur, and without consultation with Ambassador Rice, a professional courtesy that would customarily be extended to any witness.” The letter also alleges that this was not truly...

Susan Rice, President Barack Obama's former national security adviser, on Wednesday declined Sen. Lindsey Graham's request to participate in a judiciary subcommittee hearing next week on Russian interference in the US election, CNN has learned. A letter obtained exclusively by CNN from Rice's lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, outlines the grounds for her decision not to appear. It was addressed to Graham, the Republican chairman of the judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism, which is holding the hearing, and senior Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. "Senator Whitehouse has informed us by letter that he did not agree to Chairman Graham's invitation to Ambassador Rice,...

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice has reportedly declined an invitation to testify before a Senate panel investigating Russian attempts to influence the U.S. election, walking back her earlier acceptance. According to CNN, Ms. Rice’s initial acceptance of the invitation from Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, was based on the presupposition that it was a bipartisan request. However, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, reportedly told Ms. Rice that he did not approve of Mr. Graham’s invitation. According to a letter from Ms. Rice’s lawyer obtained by CNN,...

Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” while discussing President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice said it has been “unsteady and rocky” like the “crazy aunt in the attic that nobody knows what is going to do next.” When asked to characterize Trump’s foreign policy, Rice said, “I think obviously, Fareed, it’s only been just about 100 days, so it’s early days, but I would say that in many respects it’s been unsteady and rocky. And by that I would point particularly to the fact tha

It is clear from it that she is still proud of spying on Trump. ___ Susan Rice’s Twitter account is one of many windows on her partisanship. Even in the midst of an investigation into her political espionage, she can’t resist a few feverish re-tweets. The most remarkable one came on Thursday. It was a re-tweet of a reckless column by E.J. Dionne that seeks to revive, sans evidence, the fable of Trump-Russia collusion in last year’s election. It is clear from this re-tweet that Rice remains proud of the Obama administration’s spying on Trump and his aides. Notice that...

DOJ 2008 rules limit supplying politically sensitive information to the White House, a review of guidelines for domestic FBI intel investigations has found. The central focus of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence probe into putative Russian election meddling as a cover to disseminate unauthorized disclosures of sensitive US intel communications intercepts. The prohibitions may explain why the FBI still has not responded to a House request for documents about how the White House was able to “unmask” the names of Americans incidentally spied on during an apparently contrived Obama admin "foreign electronic intelligence operation" timed to run during...

Thursday evening on the radio, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin broke big news. The Landmark Legal Foundation, of which Mark Levin is president, has filed a request with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The request asks the secret court to order an investigation into the leaking of surveillance activity conducted on members of Donald Trump’s team, in accordance with the rulings of FISA. The filing Levin read cited “a flurry of recent published reports” that show an “enormous” amount of leaked classified information has been used for political purposes in opposition to President Donald Trump.

"I saw no evidence of any wrongdoing," said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents, who would not agree to be identified further. "It was all completely normal." His assessment was shared by a senior Republican aide who had been briefed on the matter but declined to speak on the record.

You can find many timelines that follow allegations of Russia tampering in the U.S. election and alleged involvement of Trump officials. But I couldn’t find any comprehensive timelines cross-referencing Obama-era surveillance of whistleblowers, journalists and other U.S. citizens with Russia surveillance allegations. So I built one. Please note: temporal proximity of events doesn’t necessarily imply a connection. January 21, 2009: President Obama takes office; pledges unprecedented transparency.

The furor over Trump’s tweet regarding being wiretapped lives on. His detractors characterize everything that comes out of his mouth as either annoying, destructive or an outright lie. Since these people cannot be used as a gauge of his veracity, I decided it was important to do my own analysis. My interest started after I wrote a column about factors surrounding the issue of his tweet stating he was wiretapped. I took the position that you had to analyze his statement and not take it literally. He really meant he and his people were having their activities and communications...

“There were occasions when I would receive a report in which a U.S. person was referred to, name not provided, just a U.S. person, and sometimes in that context in order to understand the importance of that report, and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out or request the information as to who that U.S. official was.” That was former National Security Advisor Susan Rice on MSNBC on April 4 openly admitting that she had in fact been involved in requesting the “unmasking” of the identities of U.S. persons who were caught in intercepts of foreign persons under...

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees are expanding their investigations into former National Security Adviser Susan Rice's alleged "unmasking" of U.S. persons who were incidentally collected in surveillance of foreign officials. An unnamed member of the House Intelligence Committee confirmed that Rice is now under "a full-blown investigation," Fox News reported on Wednesday. "We will be performing an accounting of all unmasking for political purposes focused on the previous White House administration. This is now a full-blown investigation," the committee member said. While she was national security advisor, Rice reportedly requested the names of US persons associated with the Trump...

Russiagate’s latest celebrity is a former Donald Trump associate named Carter Page. Page, who worked for Merrill Lynch in Moscow and speaks Russian, is a banker and investor who early in 2016 was a part of the amorphous group that was advising Trump on foreign policy. There is no evidence to suggest that he was ever an insider with the Trump campaign—quite the contrary. The Washington Post reports that he made several efforts to meet directly with Donald Trump but that his entreaties were rejected. So why the fuss? Page appears to have been a target of Russian intelligence for...

EXCERPT---Unless you happen to be a Mafia don or a drug kingpin, the US government doesn't spy on its citizens. Trump's claim of being wiretapped has been totally debunked by FBI Director James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and House intelligence committee Chair Devin Nunes. A source also told ABC News that on one occasion Susan Rice requested the unmasking of President-elect Trump's transition team officials in a foreign intelligence report that had nothing to do with the Russian Federation. So did Susan Rice have a political motive in seeking the information? (NOTE: One very good reason...

Fox News reported Tuesday night that members of the House Intelligence Committee have expanded their investigation into the Susan Rice surveillance controversy. Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, investigative reporter Adam Housley said the following: They're looking into allegations where Americans including politicians have possibly been unmasked and had their information collected into the files, similar to what they did to the Trump team. Housley also said that both the House and Senate investigations are being stonewalled: They say the FBI is being very difficult. We're told [investigators] just want to know about the unmasking. How frequent was this? Who was...

Marie Harf, a Fox News contributor and former spokeswoman for Secretary of State John Kerry, scrambled on Wednesday to defend the Obama-era Syria deal from 2013, admitting it was not "perfect." Fox News host Bill Hemmer asked Harf whether she agreed with President Trump's decision to order a military strike against Syria last week. "I did. I thought it was a good response to President Assad's use of chemical weapons," Harf said. "What I'm more focused on now quite frankly is the strategy going forward and what happens next in Syria." Harf said that Congress did not give the Obama...

President Donald Trump dismissed Susan Rice’s assertion that she did not unmask General Michael Flynn for political reasons. “Does anybody really believe that?” he asked during an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “Nobody believes that, even the people that try to protect her in the news media.” Trump reasserted his claim, adding that he and “so many other people” were the victims of surveillance and boasted that he was correct when he accused the Obama administration of wiretapping his team at Trump Tower.

I assume this Washington Post story is true: “FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page.” It confirms what has been sporadically reported since late last year, that the Obama administration sought and ultimately received a FISA order to spy on at least one associate of Donald Trump. So Trump’s famous tweets were, in substance, true.***SNIP***UPDATE: We are now starting to get a picture of how sinister this whole Democratic Party misinformation campaign is. Through the last half of 2016, the Obama administration was desperately searching for evidence of some link between the Trump presidential campaign and...

After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN. . .One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as "normal and appropriate" for officials who serve in that role to the president. And another source said there's "absolutely" no smoking gun in the reports, urging the White House to declassify them to make clear there was nothing alarming in the documents.Still,...